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The desire is naturally there. Baseball players want to play baseball. But health and well-being remain the top concern, at least from the players’ side, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, and a plan has yet to be presented, in this current climate, that makes sense, according to union chief Tony Clark.
Clark told ESPN, “we want to play,” but that doesn’t mean they are any closer to doing so in the first week of May.
“Despite all that has been floated and all the rhetoric that is out there, we have not received anything formal that details an actual plan,” Clark said.
He added: “It is a very delicate balance. We’ve had some experience, either as players or as a media group or even as an industry as a whole, navigating historical challenges; this one is different.”
There have been a number of plans reported, but they seem more like ideas that are not overly close to being finalized. There was one plan to play games solely at spring training sites in Arizona, another one at spring training sites in Arizona and Florida, and a third one in Arizona, Florida and Texas. Some of these plans, without fans, included separating players from their families, isolating them from the rest of the country aside from essential personnel. Clark described them as best guesses at this point, hopes rather than realistic means of returning to the field.
“As these ideas find their way into mainstream media, there are some ideas that seem to make sense, there are others that don’t track very well,” Clark said. “All of them are being viewed against the backdrop of getting back on the field and affording our guys an opportunity to do what they love to do. At this point, it’s unfortunate that there are things that keep finding their way into the conversation and are being represented as proposals when they aren’t.
“We have to provide fact and separate that fact from fiction and do so daily at this point in order to make sure that players have a reference point that they can inquire about or a line of communication that they can reach out to confirm what it is that they are hearing or not confirm it.”
Clark isn’t sure there is a way to play without a risk of infection. If there is, he hasn’t heard it yet.
“We are working with experts and anticipate working with the league to mitigate as much risk as possible,” he said. “But those discussions have not been had formally yet.”
